Blog

Our new research paper and policy brief summarizing findings from the SQUAT survey are now up! Check out the SQUAT Report website at http://squatreport.in. It is clear that many people who live in households with latrines still defecate in the...Read More..

Dr. Dean Spears is presenting the findings of the Squat Survey at PHFI. We posted the event details in the post before this, but here is the webinar link. You can watch Dean live presenting this paper at PHFI....Read More..

At 3pm on Thursday, June 26th -- the day after tomorrow -- I will be making the first presentation of the findings from our new paper. The paper summarizes the survey results. One key finding is that open defecation...Read More..

Diane and Dean's op-ed in the Hindustan Times came out today: here is the link. D&D argue that Open defecation is killing children, stunting growth, and holding India back from a more developed future. We don’t need the government...Read More..

IndiaSpend, which does a lot of interesting stories, did a report toilets in India. It's view? Fixing India's sanitation problem requires more than just toilets. Check out the full story here....Read More..

Lawrence Haddad wrote a blogpost reporting the results of the SQUAT Survey! Check it out here! As Lawrence said, we will report more results from the survey soon, and are writing articles that talk more about the data! We did...Read More..

Clever title aside, Victoria Fan and Rifaiyat Mahbub of the Centre for Global Development discuss the overlaps between an older paper by Shroff et al and a more recent one by Arabinda Ghosh and r.i.c.e researchers, both explaining the differences...Read More..

Along with a description of the switching study as well. We promise more, including a new website for the Squat Survey (which is being created as I type), but for now, you can read the questionnaires of the switching and...Read More..

Two more of our articles came out today. The first one, by Sangita, is titled Most rural Indians can afford a toilet but don't want one. The second one, by Diane and Dean, is called Can Modi’s next wave wash...Read More..

Julie McCarthy of National Public Radio covers the recent incident of sexual and caste violence in Badaun and open defecation. She rightly highlights the importance of shifting social norms in order to eliminate open defecation, and even uses some statistics...Read More..

In his inaugural address to India's Parliament, President Pranab Mukherjee outlined the new government's agenda. Along with other things, he promised a Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission). This is exactly what he said: 15. We must not tolerate the...Read More..

Pritha Chatterjee has an amazing report in the Indian Express from the area in Uttar Pradesh where horrible violence on young girls was reported in the media recently. I do like it. We ourselves found many of these things in...Read More..

Rukmini S, who has written quite a few articles now on the importance of sanitation, reported the Squat Survey's findings in an op-ed in the Hindu. We are of course, really thankful to her, and request you to read her...Read More..

Wordpress tells us that this is our 200th post on the r.i.c.e blog. We thank you, our readers, for being with us all this while. We wrote two new articles this past week. Actually, we wrote more, but only two...Read More..

Jairam Ramesh, who in his short tenure as India's minister for Sanitation (and in his longer tenure as Rural Development Minister) did a lot to advance the cause of ending open defecation in India, has a new article about ending...Read More..

There is much that is tragic about this story: Rape Allegations in a Haryana Village Underscore a Social Fracas. The crime itself appears to have been profound; the subsequent blaming of the victims, familiar; the terrible consequences of the social...Read More..